I was a bookish child and my mother used to take me to the local library weekly. On the way to the children’s section I had to pass the large print shelf. There was always this one hardback book there, The Spitting Image. It had a bizarre looking gargoyle on the cover and I used to look away so I wouldn’t have nightmares about it, but peek at it between my fingers. Every week for years the spitting image would watch me run past it to the Tintin books. Eventually I lost my fear and I could look it straight in the face. It was a goofy thing, nothing like as sinister as I first thought.

Once upon a time the world was a magical place and I used to invent my own rituals as protection.